Being Undead

Chapter 6*

The world feels so peaceful from up here, Laura thought to herself as she looked down from her vantage point at the top of a skyscraper to the street below.

The moon was starting to become lost in the sky, signalling that morning would soon come, but Laura could still see it in details even thickly hidden by the clouds. In fact, she could see and feel everything in details.

The breeze felt like strands on her face as it blew; her awareness so sound that she bet could easily count the said strands if she wanted. In a distance, an owl called and she knew exactly how far it was from her current position.

Even from far up where she was, she could hear the blood coursing through the veins of those passing by below; tempted more a few times to go down and sink her fangs into their flesh just to taste the rich red fluid that she was newly becoming accustomed to. She could hear the conversations around her, from those shouted high above the level of a woofer to those barely a whisper in the night.

Not been a gossip has to be one of the criteria in being an undead, she joked to herself and smiled. There were just so much "juice" around her.

"Boo!"

The sound came so unexpectedly that Laura screamed and jumped, almost falling off the edge she was seated if not that someone pulled her back. Looking up, she saw Frederick who grinned like a child with a candy, presumably at the scared expression still pasted wildly on her face.

Relief. That was what flooded through Laura the moment she laid eyes on him; and so much was her relief that the urge to hug him forever and never let go riled through her.

But she didn't. Instead, she settled for, "For a guy who said he wasn't interested in killing me, you seem content to thread the line."

"Come on, Laura," he returned, smiling, "a twenty-storey drop won't kill you." He looked down just then as if to confirm. "Well, I can't promise anything about the state of your bones afterwards though."

Frederick sat down next to Laura then, joining her in the watch. "You strayed so far from the house," he said. "Why?"

Laura shrugged. "I was feeling choked in there so I decided to take a stroll," she replied. "How did you find me?"

"Your scent."

Laura made a curious face. "Are you saying you can perceive me?"

"Not in a bad way so you can stop giving me that look," he returned. "But just like hounds, we undeads can perceive people's peculiar scents. A trained undead can use it to track people down- like me now- but an even more powerful undead can track from far far ago in time."

"Cool." She looked genuinely impressed.

"It is." Frederick gave another of devilish grins and Laura couldn't help the laughter that burst of her; the face was much too adorable for her to resist. "Come on, it's time to go home," he said and stood up, "Damian's been screaming bloody murder since you left."

Laura had been enjoying herself so much that she had forgotten about her present state, but her face fell the moment Frederick's statement made it all too real again in her mind.

"Don't you regret it even a little that you turned me?" she asked; not angrily, just curiously.

Frederick sighed. "Look," he said, "at first, I thought I'd killed you. Those few minutes that laid there in the pool of your blood were the worst; they made me feel like the world's worst monster.

"But then you came back to life and I realised I'd turned. So, between that and this, Laura-" he held her hands, "-I'm happy it's this."

Laura agreed wholeheartedly his logic was sound. If there was something worse than being an undead, it was actually dying.

"Alright, Frederick," she said, this time initiating the smile that the other took up, "let's go home."

****

Frederick had barely opened the mansion's front double door when a knife suddenly came flying in Laura's face. She wasn't ready and the projectile would have struck her cleanly between the eyes if not that Frederick snatched it out of midair.

"What was that for?" he asked, looking to Damian who stood twirling another knife between his fingers.

"Disobedience," he returned, nothing but anger in his eyes; his muscles were literally teeming with it. "I warned the newblood not to get on my nerves, Frederick, and a few minutes later, she sneaked out of the house. She was clearly defying me."

Frederick sighed, rubbing his head like he'd had enough of Damian for one night; and it didn't take powers to know that he had. "Laura, please go to bed," he said before turning to Damian. "You and I are due for a discussion, brother," he said, "this madness of yours has run for long enough."

Laura was very sure that discussion wasn't going to go well; and she wasn't wrong. She was already in the hallway far away from the foyer and she could clearly hear Frederick and Damian screaming at one another. By the time she got to her door, things had begun to break.

Forgetting that she wasn't invited to the discussion, Laura quickly raced downstairs and towards the foyer. There's no way I'm going to allow them to hurt each other over some dumb macho idea, she thought to herself as she ran; not that she had a well stated plan to prevent that.

She had almost reached them when she began to make out what they were saying. Damian was talking about someone named Daniel but she couldn't understand Frederick's reply; something about a different time. Whoever Daniel was, he was a clearly sore spot for the duo as the tension between them when she arrived was so heavy that it seemed to be coming out in thick smoke.

"Get back to your room now!" shouted Damian as soon as he saw her.

"You're not the boss of me!" she returned. She knew very well that shouting at an already enraged undead was never a good idea but she just couldn't allow him to speak to her like that.

Damian looked about to force her to comply but Frederick stepped in between them; moving from the end of the room to the other where they stood so quickly that neither of them saw him come.

"Back off, Damian," he warned, his voice surprisingly calmly for the sternness in his eyes. "Laura can go wherever she pleases in the mansion because she's a member of the family; and if you've not accepted that yet, accept it now." He turned and held his hand around her to lead her away from him. "Good night."

Now, if there was something that Frederick knew wasn't lost on Damian, it was respect. He respected Frederick and he wasn't going to throw that out the window so he left as he had been told.

After Damian had left, Laura asked, "Are you okay?"

Frederick smiled, his way of assuring her. "Of course," he replied. "Believe me, I won't be who I am if I can't handle Damian. But be careful of him please, you've gotten on his nerves a lot of time in just one day and he's not one to forgive easily." He pointed her to the door. "Go to bed," he said, "the sun's about to rise."

Laura really wanted to ask Frederick what the deal about Daniel was, but she stopped herself. He had had a long night; she too for that matter.

"Good night, Frederick," she said and went her way, his smile following her all the way as she did.

But even as Laura laid in bed to sleep, she couldn't help but wonder who Daniel was; the conversation had grown so hot after the mention of his name.

Who the hell is Daniel? She found herself asking over and over again. Why is he the cause of so much resentment?